The Influence of Participation in a Multi-Disciplinary Collaborative Service Learning Project on the Effectiveness of Team Members in a 100-level Mechanical Engineering Class
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Motivated by the observation of the storage of excess elastic free energy -- prestress in cross linked semiflexible filament networks, we consider the problem of the conformational statistics of a single semiflexible polymer in a quenched random potential. The random potential, which represents the effect of cross linking to other filaments is assumed to have a finite correlation length and mean strength. We examine the statistical distribution of curvature in the limit that the filaments are much shorter than their thermal persistence length. We compare our theoretical predictions to finite element Brownian dynamics simulations. Lastly we comment on the validity of replica field techniques in addressing these questions.more » « less
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In modern smarthomes, temperature regulation is achieved through a mix of traditional and emergent technologies including air conditioning, heating, intelligent utilization of the effects of sun, wind, and shade as well as using stored heat and cold. To achieve the desired comfort for the inhabitants while minimizing environmental impact and cost, the home controller must predict how its actions will impact the temperature and other environmental factors in various parts of the home. The question we are investigating in this paper is whether the temperature values in different rooms in a home are predictable based on readings from sensors in the home. We are also interested in whether increased accuracy can be achieved by adding sensors to capture the state of doors and windows of the given room and/or the whole home, and what type of machine learning algorithms can take advantage of the additional information. As experimentation on real-world homes is highly expensive, we use ScaledHome, a 1:12 scale, IoT-enabled model of a smart home for data acquisition. Our experiments show that while additional data can improve the accuracy of the prediction, the type of machine learning models needs to be carefully adapted to the number of data features available.more » « less
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The impedance of a dipole antenna in the earth’s ionospheric plasma is dependent on the ambient plasma properties such as electron density and electron neutral collision frequency. Depending on the length of the dipole, it is possible to not only measure the plasma properties, but in addition, receive plasma waves that are found propagating in the ionosphere. Here we report on some FDTD simulations of a dipole antenna in a cold plasma, and present some approximate expressions that can be used to analyze this behavior. When the dipole antenna resonant wavelength /4 and associated frequency is far from the upper hybrid, cyclotron and plasma frequencies of the local plasma, the expressions work fairly well. However, when the length of the antenna is such that it’s resonant wavelength coincides or is close to the plasma resonances, the expressions fail, and a full-wave FDTD simulation has to be performed to extract meaningful plasma data.more » « less
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